Study used in ObamaCare argument was misrepresented

posted at 2:20 pm on June 4, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

Peter Orszag and the Obama administration argued for months that cutting health-care spending could make people healthier, by removing ineffective treatments and standardizing approaches to care. They relied on an “obscure” Dartmouth study, using it on several occasions as a substantiation of the ObamaCare approach. The New York Times belatedly discovers that the study actually makes no such claim on qualitative outcomes:

In selling the health care overhaul to Congress, the Obama administration cited a once obscure research group at Dartmouth College to claim that it could not only cut billions in wasteful health care spending but make people healthier by doing so.

Wasteful spending — perhaps $700 billion a year — “does nothing to improve patient health but subjects you and me to tests and procedures that aren’t necessary and are potentially harmful,” the president’s budget director, Peter Orszag, wrote in a blog post characteristic of the administration’s argument.

Mr. Orszag even displayed maps produced by Dartmouth researchers that appeared to show where the waste in the system could be found. Beige meant hospitals and regions that offered good, efficient care; chocolate meant bad and inefficient. …

But while the research compiled in the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care has been widely interpreted as showing the country’s best and worst care, the Dartmouth researchers themselves acknowledged in interviews that in fact it mainly shows the varying costs of care in the government’s Medicare program. Measures of the quality of care are not part of the formula.

For all anyone knows, patients could be dying in far greater numbers in hospitals in the beige regions than hospitals in the brown ones, and Dartmouth’s maps would not pick up that difference. As any shopper knows, cheaper does not always mean better.

Well, sometimes you have to pass legislation to find out what’s not in it. In this case, what got left out was the qualitative improvements in care promised by the Democrats. In fact, the study actually shows that cuts in health-care funding will more likely lead to poorer outcomes than better ones.

That hasn’t stopped the Obama administration — and one of its most controversial appointees — from continuing to claim that the Dartmouth study corroborates their claims:

Dr. Donald Berwick, nominated by President Obama to run Medicare, called it the most important research of its kind in the last quarter-century. In March, in response to the Congressional Democrats who would have otherwise withheld their support for the health legislation, the administration made a promise. It said it would ask the Institute of Medicine, a nongovernment advisory group, to consider ways of putting the Dartmouth findings into action by setting payment rates that would punish inefficient hospitals and reward efficient ones.

But if that system penalizes big city hospitals like those at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and NYU Langone Medical Center — which look profligate by Dartmouth’s measure but may rank much higher by other quality indicators — a battle over the validity of the Dartmouth work is almost certain in Congress.

In fact, among health policy analysts, that battle has already begun. Critiques have been published in prominent medical journals, and more are on the way.

That’s a safe bet. Berwick has already been targeted for a high-profile confirmation fight, thanks to his public statements lavishing praise on the UK’s single-payer NHS system. His claims over the Dartmouth study will open up a second front and perhaps make Berwick simply untenable as an appointee, just as Dawn Johnsen turned out to be too radical for the White House to support. If the hearings start looking like an open forum on the dishonesty of the representation of the Dartmouth study, expect Berwick to be withdrawn.

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They lied , they hid , and yes the did it with malice to take away our health care to give the health care system over to GOVERNMENT control .
Wait till the BIG surprise emerges ..AMNESTY is ALREADY part of the OBOMACARE.
How will the government determine if you are eligible to PAY for care if you are an illegal ?
Sounds like DONT ASK DONT TELL to me
Better yet declare you are not a Citizen and the government would be FORCED to cover it up and thus protect you for eternity ……….

And why should Obama, Pelosi or Reid even care? ObamaCare was DESIGNED to FAIL. That way they could move directly to the one-payer (GOVERNMENT) system. They’ve already FAILED to meet 3 MINOR deadlines. Do you think they’ll meet MAJOR ones?

Geithner in particular, needs to be charged with either fraud, or professional malpractice.

This is not the first time his facts and figures have been highly suspect. He first put out a study in the mid 00’s. Saying that it was a near matrhematical impossibility for Fannie & Freddie to cause harm to the American tax-payer and pushed to have congerss to reduce the its capital reserves against risk on the basis of his research.

Gee, that turned out swell didn’t it.

Then in his first budget projections for the Obama administration for 09, he was off by 40% to negative side.

Not 4%, which would be troubling, not 14%, which would be grounds for an immediate dismissal, but 40%! Which is adequate grounds for frickin firing squad!

A large percentage of “wasteful” and “unnecessary” spending has nothing to do with increasing the quality of healthcare. The unnecessary became necessary because of Edwardsesque ambulance chasing lawyers and a rampant zero-defect mentality that requires doctors to practice “CYA medicine.” No one beyond the age of reason tries to defende doctors who are grossly negligent, but until healthcare reform includes and adequately addresses medical liability (and Democrats are no longer in the pockets of the trial lawyers – heh, fat chance of that…), defensive medicine will continue to keep costs up.

When was this Dartmouth Atlas study conducted? What were the parameters used? Just because some liberal NE school does a study we are supposed to accept the validity of it and use it to determine the course of our nationalized health care. I don’t think so and the whole lot of this regime needs to be sent packing.

As long as the sheeple…dare I mention defensive LOST fans...***snark*** continue to lap up what the media tells them, we will always have idiots who listen to sound bytes and then proceed to screw the rest of us with their ignorant votes.

How in hell is it that this country fields so many college educated fools? The is a vast difference between education and intelligence. You don’t have to go to Harvard to know when someone is blowing smoke up your bum. I have known from day one this idiot in the White House was exactly that and everyone around him and the people that elected him are guilty of the same failing. I got an education but I like to think I knew how to think before I went to school. Little things like knowing that media is the plural of medium. Follow me? If you have enough little bits of knowledge after awhile they actually mean something. There are alot of people in this country with a dearth of bits.

At my friend’s med school graduation this past weekend the speaker, a leftist priest, pointed out the fact that the job market for new doctors is horrible right now because, although there is large demand, there is not enough money to pay for the supply of doctors required. Doctors will be required to take a cut in pay he says. And the topper is that single payer universal health care is the only solution. The applause was very light.

Everything about Obama is mirage. I didn’t have any study at my command, but I knew intuitively and from experience that reclaiming lost efficiencies is almost impossible for the government to do. Whatever it may gain, it will quickly lose again, plus more, as long as the likes of Obama, Pelosi and Reid are running the show.

I and my fellow health administration master’s candidates used the Dartmouth Atlas extensively in our research papers. We would have been laughed out of class had we tried to fashion a quality of care argument from that data. It’s strictly utilization/cost data, not quality of care. To make a quality of care argument using the Atlas would be sloppy; to know the Atlas as well as the Obama administration policymakers surely do and make a quality of care argument goes beyond disingenuous into outright premeditated falsehood. But what else is new with crew?

LarryG on June 4, 2010 at 4:00 PM
How do we know that Obama graduated for what he had for a GPA? He refuses to release any of that info. I’ll be W had a higher GPA at Harvard MBA than Obama had at Harvard Law.

When most of those Dems that witheld their votes, until the bribes were rolled in….I highly doubt they’d have witheld their votes over knowledge of this.

This was never about health care, and all about attaining power. Carville, and Clinton both said, Dems would be in power for years, after they passed this.

If these same dems now stood out, and said, repeal, for the sake of the country, I may be able to respect a few of them again. If they don’t, then they were never concerned about the quality in the first place.

There has been a huge ad campaign, both radio and TV, about the nerve of Congress to let huge cuts to Medicare and Tricare go into effect while the vacation. And who is putting out the ads? The AMA, who couldn’t wait to jump into their white coats and stand in the Rose Garden with The Won. More “smart” people proving otherwise.